Why are so many salad dressings being served today sweet?

America is in love with heart attacks and diabetes. ;-)
Make your own at home, in restaurants ask for oil and vinegar and dress the salad yourself. A squeeze of lemon is nice too.

Sweet-sour can taste good on salads--a PINCH of sugar can bring out flavors, but as Le Bec Fin says, the US is addicted to sugar and fat thanks to fast food. The first thing I hear from Europeans who have visited the US is a complaint about how sweet everything is. I think the masses here have become so accustomed to sweet that they don't perceive it and crave ever more quantities of sugar to satisfy their need. A massive palate re-education is desperately needed,

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/articles/50-salad-dressing-recipes.html

I found this link All of these sound great but I would cut down or out the sugar in the mango one. The mango should be sweet enough to cut the bite of any vinegar. Even the Spicy Honey-Mustard could be good if the Honey was just cut back.

Ginny, i agree 100%. America is SICK with sugar.......and salt. There is sugar in EVERYthing.
99% of the restnts i see- serve bottled salad dressing and those always have sugar in them. But in France, home made vinaigrettes do not have sugar in them.Generically speaking, there is absolutely no reason to put sugar in a vinaigrette (with the exception of Asian dressings that often have soy sauce, and the sugar helps balance the dressing. Unless I am eating at an 'artisinal' or higher end restnt, i always ask for my salad to have dressing on the side, because 1) they usually overdress salads and 2) you don't know when that Herbal Ranch dressing is going to taste like candy. blech.
Sorry, rant over.Upshot>i agree totally w/ you.

You don't say where you are. That trend is (happily) not everywhere, and I haven't seen it called gourmet. But it's widespread enough that I ask if salad dressings are sweet. If they are, I ask for oil and vinegar.